Why So Many Ambitious Men And So Little Lofty Ambition Are To Be Found In The United States 11-8-2010 (Part One)

Do I foretaste Nietzsche's preaching about the malaise of the herd in de Tocqueville's conclusion?

...Moralists are constantly complaining that the ruling vice of the present time is pride. This is true in one sense, for indeed no one thinks that he is not better than his neighbor, or consents to obey his superior: but it is extremely false in another; for the same man who cannot endure subordination or equality, has so contemptible an opinion of himself that he thinks he is only born to indulge in vulgar pleasures. He willingly takes up with low desires, without daring to embark in lofty enterprises, of which he scarcely dreams. Thus, far from thinking that humility ought to be preached to our contemporaries, I would have endeavors made to give them a more enlarged idea of themselves and of their kind. Humility is unwholesome to them; what they most want is, in my opinion, pride. I would willingly exchange several of our small virtues for this one vice.

Why So Many Ambitious Men And So Little Lofty Ambition Are To Be Found In The United States

I would like to know if Nietzsche read de Tocqueville. I suppose de  Tocqueville wrote before Schopenhauer. This passage seems very European in tone and content. Maybe it is just another stone in the road to Nietzsche. I do not see much of America in the passage. I see this fitting better within his discussion of ambitious men in generic democracies. 

Does he implicate Napoleon here?

So that, when once an ambitious man has the power in his grasp, there is nothing he may noted are; and when it is gone from him, he meditates the overthrow of the State to regain it. This gives to great political ambition a character of revolutionary violence, which it seldom exhibits to an equal degree in aristocratic communities. The common aspect of democratic nations will present a great number of small and very rational objects of ambition, from amongst which a few ill-controlled desires of a larger growth will at intervals break out: but no such a thing as ambition conceived and contrived on a vast scale is to be met with there.

In Burr, Gore Vidal has Aaron Burr talk of Napoleon and how the military conqueror was admired by Burr. I do not see in Burr any "character of revolutionary violence" - and, perhaps, it was the source of his failure. It supports my theory that Burr had dreams of conquering Mexico, not of overthrowing the Untied States. 

This passage may also be relevant to Burr:

...The common aspect of democratic nations will present a great number of small and very rational objects of ambition, from amongst which a few ill-controlled desires of a larger growth will at intervals break out: but no such a thing as ambition conceived and contrived on a vast scale is to be met with there.

sch

[And we still cannot say we have the great ambition described by de Tocqueville. Yes, Trump would like to overthrow the Constitution, have his greasy fingers on the levers of power, but not out of some great vision of what he can make America. For all the mindless chatter of a "red Caesar", Trump is neither Cassar, nor Robespierre, nor Lenin, or Mao, or Garibaldi. He does not want power to impose a vision of a brave new world, but the greatest nightmare possible for a narcissistic sociopath - jail time, punishment, denial of his wishes. sch 11/5/2023.]